It’s finally recess, and it’s been the first properly quiet day in Westminster for weeks. Have a good weekend…
- New policy announcement: Just off embargo, Liz has pledged to ditch EU law from the statute books by the end of 2023 to boost the economy.
- This timetable is much sooner than Rishi has promised to merely ‘review’ all existing EU laws
- Liz will scrap the EU’s Solvency II regulation to “unlock billions of investment into UK infrastructure”
- Every piece of EU-derived regulation will be evaluated on the basis of whether it supports UK growth or boosts investment
- Supporter Kwasi Kwarteng told Sky News that not only will Liz deliver her tax cuts, they’re cuts Boris Johnson was looking to make anyway. “In fact, Boris Johnson himself indicated only a few weeks ago that he was looking to make those tax cuts, and Liz will deliver on them.”
- The economist she cited yesterday as being a key supporter of her tax cut plans, Patrick Minford, has told The Times that interest rates will have to rise up to 7% to allow them, though he argues this is a good thing as it will protect savings and kill off “zombie companies” holding the economy back
- Will be in Kent tomorrow, touring Sevenoaks, Tunbridge Wells, Maidstone, Canterbury and Folkestone
- New policy announcement: Just off embargo, Rishi has promised to put the NHS on a “war footing” to tackle emergency of NHS waiting lists
- On day one he will “create a ‘vaccine style’ backlogs taskforce with the power to do whatever it takes to get waiting times down”
- He pledges to get overall numbers falling by next year and one year waits eliminated by September 2024
- Minor row about last night’s claims he flew back from the US in December 2021 to stop the UK being put into another lockdown. A government source told Jason Groves – unsurprisingly – that it was “categorically untrue”. Fortunately for Rishi, Groves’s own Mail, The Telegraph and The Times all reported it as such at the time
- Covid Research Group chair Mark Harper, a backer of Sunak’s, also praised him for leading the fight against government scientists’ demands
- We finally got footage of Rishi doing a video for Vote Leave during the 2016 referendum
- Will be giving a speech tomorrow on his new NHS policy
Bookies Odds (Previous in Brackets):
- Liz Truss 4/11 (4/7)
- Rishi Sunak 15/8 (5/4)
